Look! Look! Lots of tasty new gadgets from China! Click! Click! Click! Oh, wait, I think I copied the wrong link. Well, don't just sit there. Click it. And now do something. 
It looks like Chuck Colson is calling secularists 'terrorist-enablers'. I call Chuck Colson an idiot douchebag.
The Technology Liberation Front have an excellent response to Senator Joe Liberman's (thoroughly misguided) ideas about electronic media censorship.
WBEZ, Chicago's public radio station, are now making This American Life available via podcasting. Here's the RSS feed.
Guess what, Metropolitan Police, delaying the measly trial that you are having of the killers of Jean Charles de Menezes for a year won't really help us forget that it's happened. The lawyer representing the filth said that the trial "has implications for the police, not only in London but in the UK". I should bloody well hope so, since the current state of affairs is thoroughly unacceptable - a copper shoots an innocent person on the Tube and nothing actually happens. Let's hope it has some implications and let's hope those implications happen some time soon!
I hate to seem like I'm engaging in scaudenfreude, but another branch of the Catholic Crutch is falling down because of the sex abuse stuff. Unfortunately, the very real possibility of sexual molestation by priests isn't slowing applications to faith schools. 
Nobody turned up to your birthday party? Serves you right, you dozy tart.
Peter Bagge has an excellent cartoon on immigration.
I've signed up to go to the new 'IT Business' recruitment fair this month, put on by my university. Want to see something depressing? Here's the exhibitors list. Fortunately, it's on the same day as Ian's Werewolf night, so if it all goes a bit pear-shaped, I can always just disappear off to the pub and pretend to be an innocent villager.
Carlotta has found an excellent column on nanny-statism and the care system. If you want to read something interesting, check out this government report. If the government think they can do a better job at raising kids than parents, then statistics for those in care ought to outshine the average. Until that happens, they can take their "good advice" and stuff it where the sun doesn't shine.
Southeastern Trains says "fuck you" to loyal customers 
Remember that old saying about "the customer is always right". Well, I'm a customer and I'm not always right. I admit that. But this just takes the biscuit.
I'm on the train at the moment, and I'm pissed off. I buy a train ticket every day that I travel. It costs me £10.65 for a return Travelcard ticket. Most of the time I either buy it from a machine or from the ticket office. I spend, on average, £30-£40 a week on train tickets at a minimum. I was running a minute or two late for my train today so I boarded the train without a ticket. I could have stayed and bought a ticket but it would have made me miss the train. The people on board the trains are usually very helpful and friendly.
Today was the exception.
I was told that the ticket inspectors are not supposed to actually sell tickets to customers with Young Person's Railcards, in spite of the ticket machine and credit card machine that they hang around their neck. Wait a second, not supposed to sell tickets on the train?
Apparently, it is true. It is listed on the Terms and Conditions. What utter bollocks.
The train companies are making the same amount from me whether I buy it from a machine, from the guy in the ticket office or on the train. This year, I expect that I'll pay at least £950 on train tickets (that's an extremely conservative estimate) - and I have done similarly for the last two years. I don't expect much - a seat, some civility from the staff and hopefully no idiotic douchebags shouting in to their phones. Instead, I get told to observe some bullshit small print crap. No wonder nobody takes public transport - it feels like it's designed to be as fucking inconvenient as possible.
Here's the rub though. I always pay for my journey. Always. And because of some bullshit rule, I'm not actually allowed to buy a ticket on the goddamn train (something I've been doing in the last two years that I've been travelling). Yet the number of times I see people on the late-night trains not buying a ticket while the ticket inspector turns a blind eye because he doesn't want the hassle of calling out the transport police.
Well fuck this shit. I've had it up to here with all this public transport nonsense. Since we're going to be screwed over by some bureaucrat, why even bother playing the game?
Yes, I could have bought the ticket from the office. Then I would have missed my train, and had to wait longer for another one. That would make me late for what I'm doing in London, which would mean that I would have to stay later to get all the things I need doing done, which would then mean that I wouldn't be able to take the slightly less busy train - I would be coming home on a later train, making that busier. I'm giving you my money - why are you making it so bloody hard to do so?
We're customers on a (not particularly well) privatised industry - yet we get treated like cattle. Some of us choose to do this because it's supposed to be more convenient than driving (or because we want to don't want to burn fossil fuels or whatever other do-gooder motive we have for taking the train). This rule only makes travel less convenient - it doesn't provide any value for the train company, nor for the customer. If they've got any brains, they'll abolish this pointless rule - or at the very least stop enforcing it. If you are a customer of a train company which enforces this rule, you really ought to complain the management of the train company.
Not technically possible? My arse
Sorry for the continued obscenity. I got up this morning, and I thought I'd have a nice pleasant day. Instead, I've been surrounded by people speaking in soft platitudes and increasingly irritating nonsense (mostly religious people, of course). You'll have to forgive me if I'm a little pissed off - but it angers me greatly that so many people need it rammed down their throat so many times before they finally realise the bleeding obvious.
Case in point? The movie industry.
They've finally realised that the reason people pirate movies is because (a) the cinema experience sucks, and (b) if you want to watch the movie when it comes out, it's either a chocie between cinema or piracy.
Now, go and download a movie. Take a look at them - they aren't audience captures. They're either pre-releases, review copies or someone who's slipped fifty to the projectionist to make them a copy.
I haven't got an objection to paying for video content, but the economics of it don't work. What do I mean? Well, I can quite easily waste two hours browsing clips on YouTube. Or I can waste two hours watching a movie. One costs me nothing except a bit of bandwidth and some time, while the other costs me the price of a ticket and a trip to the cinema.
The time I spend watching video is on the train. Look, look! I've got between and two and three hours free while sitting on the train with a laptop in front of me. Sell me the movie then and I'll watch it.
So, what about precious Mr Woodward - the UK film minister (scoff!)? Well, for a minister, he's got surprisingly little intelligent things to say about the film industry.
"If they want to watch it at home, then maybe you should make it available to them."
Quick, give this man a god-damn medal! He's so intelligent!
But they should pay a premium rate for having it earlier on and it should be encrypted in such a way that it can't be copied.
Yeah, lock 'em down real tight. That'll make the customers real happy. And it's so effective, as the history of Digital Rights Management shows.
Good thing the film industry has this bright spark in government.
